Dakota co-op chief sells apartment for $27.5M

Ydessa Hendeles and the unit at 1 West 72nd Street
Ydessa Hendeles and the unit at 1 West 72nd Street

Investment banker and philanthropist Bruce Barnes, head of the co-op board at the Dakota on the Upper West Side, has sold his three-bedroom apartment at the famed building for $27.5 million, according to public records filed with the city today.

The sale comes a year after the unit was pulled from the market. Indeed, the unit went into contract in 2012, but that deal never closed. It had been listed for $29.6 million by Brown Harris Stevens’ broker John Burger that time around.

But it’s unclear whether Burger brokered this most recent sale, which closed on January 7. Neither Burger nor Barnes was immediately available for comment and the property was never relisted.

The buyer of the unit is noted Canadian art collector Ydessa Hendeles, who according to the trade publication ArtNews, is one of the 50 most influential art professionals in the world. Until recently, Hendeles operated a private art foundation in Toronto but the foundation shuttered in 2012. Last fall, Hendeles sold 144 works of contemporary art to the private museum of U.S. billionaire Mitchell Rales for an undisclosed price. A message left at Hendeles’ office was not immediately returned.

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

The property features 12-foot ceilings, 19th-Century moldings and seven wood-burning fireplaces, according to the 2012 listing. It also has a 24-foot Central Park-facing library, and two balconies.

The Dakota, the courtyard of which was the site of the murder of Beatles legend John Lennon, is also home to Lennon’s wife Yoko Ono as well as to actress Lauren Bacall and singer Roberta Flack, according to previous news reports.

Barnes’ tenure as co-op board president was not without incident. In 2011, he and his fellow board members faced a lawsuit from resident Alphonse Fletcher, who is black, claiming that the board’s decision to deny him the right to buy a second apartment in the building was racially motivated. The tussle is still ongoing.